Missouri's ID and Anti-Science Bill

Equal time? That's so 1980s. McLean v. Arkansas, anyone?But I guess if creationists learned from their failures, they'd stop being creationists.

But see Edwards v.Aguillard: The fact that creationists can lie about their motives, which they will, doesn't mean that the court has to take their lies at face value, which it won't if their previous failures are anything to go by.

Do you have to trot this out on every thread?

'Cos they always are. And if this one gets as far as a court, it shouldn't be hard to prove it. Well, what is a secular purpose?Suppose that a state legislator in a drought-stricken state believes on religious grounds that a sacrifice of goats to God will make it rain, and tries to pass a law providing for the provision of sacrificial goats out of the state budget. Now, does he have a secular purpose just because he sincerely believes that the goat sacrifice will achieve the laudable secular goal of making it rain?Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Well ... being a completely different bill about something else altogether?I don't see that there's any constitutional way to smuggle creationism into the classroom. But you shouldn't be asking us, you should ask any right-wing think-tank, I'm sure they'll have a great idea which will turn out not to work.I don't think any version of it will work. Judges will be alert to this. They know that creationists have spent the last umpteen ideas trying to fool a judge and slip one past him and the First Amendment. Who wants to be the first judge to say: "And I am that fool!" Especially since it would then go to appeal. The line has been drawn.If creationists want their opinions taught in classrooms, they should try to set creationism on a sound scientific footing. But they seem to spend more money on lawsuits than they do on that. A cynic might suggest that this is because they know that they have more chance of winning a lawsuit than of producing scientific evidence in favor of their case.

I've certainly heard of him. Also today I've heard of a woman who drowned her nine-year-old son on the grounds that his penis was too small, and she killed him to spare him the pain of growing up with an undersized penis.I don't deny the existence of mad people, even of mad judges. I just have a confidence, not absolutely certain, but statistical, that given the hierarchy of judicial decisions, one insane person in a position to which he is absolutely unsuited will not win.